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There is a known problem with Youtube both excessive recommending in the same category and driving people to more extreme videos. If you watch a surfing video,

by dtech 5y ago

There is a known problem with Youtube both excessive recommending in the same category and driving people to more extreme videos. If you watch a surfing video, even for a few seconds, expect a lot of surfing videos to pop up in your recommendations for a long time. This has gotten slightly better over time in my experience. The larger problem is extremism. Watch a video about a vegetarian dish, get recommended vegetarian dish and lifestyle videos, watch those, get recommended veganism videos, watch those, get recommended PETA and animal activism. It kinda works like a funnel. Might not seems that dangerous for your favourite topic, but now replace the topic with conspiracy theories, religious extermism, radical feminism, anti-government armed resistance, self-harm and suicide, anorexia etc. etc.

azangru 5y ago
I believe it's been attributed to the fact that more "extremist" content gets more engagement from users in the form of comments or longer watch time.
banana_giraffe 5y ago
All of this reminds me of the early days of the TiVo. It had a recommendation system that it would use to fill your DVR with shows you would like. If you recorded a show in a new category (which gave the show an implicit positive rating), it would often go off the rails and find everything in that category. The first time I recorded "The Simpsons", it filled up my DVR with cartoons over the course of the next week before I noticed what it was doing. We seem to be basically no better than that sort of logic.
bl5THJUSFXWy4ii 5y ago
> There is a known problem with Youtube both excessive recommending in the same category and driving people to more extreme videos. There is a belief that that problem exists with YouTube but whether that actually exists requires further investigation. For example [1] suggests the opposite. [1] https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10419 https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10419

by dtech 5y ago

azangru 5y ago

I believe it's been attributed to the fact that more "extremist" content gets more engagement from users in the form of comments or longer watch time.

banana_giraffe 5y ago

All of this reminds me of the early days of the TiVo. It had a recommendation system that it would use to fill your DVR with shows you would like. If you recorded a show in a new category (which gave the show an implicit positive rating), it would often go off the rails and find everything in that category. The first time I recorded "The Simpsons", it filled up my DVR with cartoons over the course of the next week before I noticed what it was doing. We seem to be basically no better than that sort of logic.

bl5THJUSFXWy4ii 5y ago

> There is a known problem with Youtube both excessive recommending in the same category and driving people to more extreme videos. There is a belief that that problem exists with YouTube but whether that actually exists requires further investigation. For example [1] suggests the opposite. [1] https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10419 https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10419